[asciident]

I and almost everyone I know have had the exact same experience. Buyer agents seems to basically set you up on some auto-email service for a search filter (which you can do yourself on many real estate websites), and occasionally take you to see some homes. They use all sorts of fear tactics to keep themselves from getting cut, and everyone is starting to realize it.

I ended up buying a house via private sale (FSBO) and I had no agent, and everyone won BIG TIME. The closing costs, including the lawyer, title search, and court documents were $650. With an agent, the costs besides the home purchase would have been about $25,000. It's a prisoner's dilemma, where either of you has an agent, then both buyer and seller are worse off.

[dragonwriter]

> Buyer agents seems to basically set you up on some auto-email service for a search filter

There are better agents, but finding them is challenging.

[mreome]

If there is a challenge to finding a good agent, and a challenge to doing it yourself, doesn't the option that saves you a ton of money just make more sense?

[dragonwriter]

In some cases, yes, in some, no. It really depends on your situation, including what your opportunity cost for the marginal time commitment of doing it yourself is and if your transaction is special in a way which changes the expected value of an agent and/or the expected cost of doing it yourself, and if you've found solutions that put you in a better than average position with either of the two opposing challenges.